I ran into Colin. He had traded his kilt for jeans and a tee shirt, and had a bottle of wine in his hand. He was visiting friends across the campground. We spoke briefly, as strangers probing for the possibility of friendship, then he invited me to join them.

It was the guitarist and singer I had talked to in Lausanne, David Jordan and Kristin Hansen.

David and Kristin had brought the ensolite pads out of their tent to lie on and she had her head in his lap. Colin dropped into lotus, slipping his feet up on top of his knees. I have never been able to do that. The best I can manage is a Cherokee squat. Colin handed out plastic cups and passed the wine around.  I poured an inch into mine and moistened my lips at the salude. Kristin slipped into the tent and came back with a candle in a fruit jar.

When I had met these three as strangers on the street, I had not told them why I was looking for Raven. Now I did. I had no reason for secrecy, and the time was right.

“So you have no idea where she has gone,” Kristin said.

“No, not really. In Paris, someone said Lausanne. In Lausanne, you said Montreaux.”

“Europe is a big place to search, with no better clues than that.”

“Tell me about it!”

“She might have come in after you checked the hostel in Montreaux.”

“I’ll call the woman I’m working with in the morning, and then make the rounds again.”

They were open and willing to help, but it was more from courtesy than any feeling for my problem. I was painfully aware of the difference in our ages. David and Kristin were barely twenty, off for the summer from some small college in England. Colin was little older. I was nearing thirty. It was a critical decade that stretched between them and me. I felt out of place and a little ridiculous sitting with them. Living close to the ground is something normally reserved for youth. A man my age should be in a suite, living off room service, and looking out at the lake over a manicured lawn, not squatting on his haunches in front of a tent with a fruit jar candle for ambiance. And not with the intention of crawling into a tiny nylon room to sleep in a bag of duck feathers. David and Kristin made me aware of the years between us. As I had felt out of place with Susyn last night, they made me feel out of place here.

I ignored the feeling. A man who lives by what others see in him, will have no freedom.

“Actually,” I said, “Eric is my only hope of finding her. If she were alone, she could go anywhere and do anything, but Eric will have to keep playing his fiddle for money, and that restricts their movements.”

David said, “Let me see his picture again.” I passed it over.  While David twisted it about in the candle’s faint light, I described his Hardanger fiddle. It was more distinctive than its player. David said, “The face looks familiar, and the fiddle clinches it. I saw your Eric several times last year when I was making the circuit alone, before I took up with Kristin.” more tomorrow

Chapter Nineteen

Raven wasn’t in Montreaux. I hit the cheap hotels, the youth hostel, and found out that the only campground was two stops east by steamer. I reasoned that Eric would have too much pride to let Raven pay his way, so I decided not to worry about the more expensive places. I had to set some limits on my search.

The steamer passed the Château de Chillon, a lovely pile built out in the waters of Lac Léman, then moved on down to Villeneuve. It was a short walk to the campground, where the operator did not recognize either picture. It was nearing evening, so I took a place and pitched my tent. I walked around the campground, through the nearby parks, down by the lake, out onto the docks, and back to the steamer pier without seeing a familiar face.

The campground at Villeneuve was as beautiful a place as I could remember. The whole length of Lac Léman stretched westward toward the setting sun. High cirrus clouds were taking fire in an impossibly blue sky, above an impossibly blue lake. On either side of the lake and surrounding Villeneuve itself were huge rounded hills cloaked with intense green, and southeastward, dominating everything, were the snowy peaks of the main Alps.

As I approached the steamer pier, I heard bagpipes. It was Colin MacAdam, a street musician I had met in Paris, striding up and down in full kilt. He had a swatch of tartan spread over a cardboard box to collect the tourists’ money. I tossed in a few francs as he passed. He nodded without breaking rhythm. When he finished the piece he was playing, Colin grinned at me and said, “I haven’t seen them yet, Ian. I’ll keep looking and asking if you want.” I thanked him, scribbled the number of the consulate at Marseille on a piece of paper, and told him to ask for Will Hayden if he got any news.

He went back to work and I stayed for the pleasure of the pipes. They are an acquired taste. I probably would not have given them the repeated hearing it takes to accustom American ears to the drone and the strange intonation of the notes if I had not been interested in my own Scottish ancestry.

After Colin had finished his set, I went down to the docks near the campground. The sun was just setting. The sky was maroon and gold. The lambent light reflected off the varnished sailboats and painted golden reflections in the still waters. A mother duck had made a temporary home on one of the finger piers, with her brood of half-fletched young piled up around her. I said hello, but she only hissed a warning. I skirted them carefully to avoid disturbing them. I unlaced my boots and sat on the end of the pier, dangling my feet in the cold waters of Lac Léman while I watched the sky turn Prussian blue.

I wanted to reach out and take Raven’s hand, and share this beauty with her. At the same time, I felt a kind of bitter freedom.

I walked back to the campground. The tents were crowded together on a lovely, treeless lawn. Even here, where the beauty of nature was as wild and moving as any American national park, there was no thought of giving each camper a space of his own, and there were no campfires. European campgrounds are a Sunday picnic, not the Frontiersman conquering the wilderness. more tomorrow

I remembered one more incident with Raven. It was the afternoon we had climbed to the Monmarte, a few hours before we met Eric. We had entered the cathedral of Sacre Couer, and were sitting side by side. The roof was lost in shadow and the stained glass windows were rich with the light of afternoon. There were only a few tourists; they seldom get past Notre Dame. Most of the people coming and going were genuine worshippers. I watched one old woman as she entered, genuflected, and made her slow and painful way to an alter in a side chapel. She lit a candle and remained there on her knees for a time, then with equal slowness, came back past us and went back out into the world. It was a simple thing, repeated a thousand times a day in every cathedral in Europe, but it touched me.

Raven gave me an odd look as I wiped my eyes and made a deprecating mouth. We had never talked about religion. I asked, “Are you Catholic?”

“Sort of. I go a few times a year, and I feel a little guilty that I don’t go more often. I don’t think about it much. You?”

I shook my head. “Protestant background. Fire and brimstone Baptist, to be exact. My folks would give me hell for even being in a Catholic cathedral. I stopped believing a long time ago, but I think about it a lot.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t have a superstructure of priests to do my thinking for me.”

She was silent for a while. I thought I had offended her. I could have added that Reverend Billy Thompson had been as willing to do the thinking for his Baptist congregation as any Catholic priest ever could be. But that wasn’t what was on her mind. She finally said, “Doesn’t it scare you?”

“Sure.”

“So why don’t you go back?”

“Faith isn’t something you can turn off and on. When it’s gone, it’s just gone.”

“Don’t you ever think maybe you’re wrong?”

I shook my head.

“Just like that?”

I shrugged.

“And when you die?”

“I just die.”

“I couldn’t live like that.”

“I wouldn’t want you to. I don’t try to talk people into thinking my way. It’s much more comfortable to believe in God.”

“Don’t you ever miss it – miss Him?”

I shuffled the words around in my mind to get them just right. It was something I didn’t want Raven to misunderstand.

“What I miss,” I said, “isn’t the assurance or the comfort. Not any more. That’s what a kid misses. What I miss is . . . like this: I go out in the evening and I’m alone and I see a beautiful sunset. The clouds are on fire and the sky is so blue it’s almost green. It is so beautiful it makes me hurt and I just want to look up and say, ‘Thank you.’ But there’s no one to say it to. That’s what I really miss. Having someone to say ‘thank you’ to.”

#          #          #

The steamer was pulling into Montreaux. The other passengers were gathering up their baggage. I dropped my feet from the rail and slipped my arms into the packs traps.

I could still see Raven’s face as it had looked there in Sacre Coeur. It was as if she had stepped back three paces while sitting still. Her body was still there, but in her mind, she had gone far away.

Just like she had gone away, completely away, two mornings later. There was a connection between the two events. I could feel the connection, but I could not define it. And unless I did, she was lost to me forever. I might find her, warn her, and save her from the assailants who had attacked her, but unless I unlocked the greater puzzle of Raven herself, I would never hold her in my arms again. more tomorrow

On April thirteenth I picked Raven up out of the sea. On June thirteenth, she left me. Two months to the day, and in all that time we were never separated more than the few hours. Such a strange beginning; such a swift, cruel end. So much to remember, yet so few really intimate conversations.

I remembered the day we finally entered the Mediterranean. The levante had brought warm, clear skies and more wind than the damaged sails could use. It was the kind of day that made me hunger to have the Wahini functioning properly again. We slipped smoothly through a rippled sea, making three knots under conditions that should have given us twice that speed.

Raven and I were nestled together, naked. We had found a favorite position. I sat with my back braced against the weather davit. Raven sat in front of me, leaning back against me, with her foot on the wheel lazily keeping Wahini on course. My hands were locked beneath her breasts, with fingers free to make occasional teasing excursions upward to her nipples. We could keep that position for hours if I was in post-coital lethargy, but no matter how worn out I was, the gentle swaying of the boat would eventually take my mind off seamanship and we would make love.

Today, we hadn’t reached that stage. We were simply talking. I had told Raven about my father and how he had abandoned my sister and me after my mother died. It is not something I talk about easily, and I had eventually grown tired of the bitterness in my own voice and had shut up. There followed a long silence, until Raven said, “You would like my father.”

“Oh?”

“You’re a lot like him. He is a powerful man. I don’t mean physically, and I don’t mean his political clout. He is a man who knows his mind and doesn’t swerve once he has decided on a course of action. He has enormous self-confidence. Like you.”

I didn’t know what to say. I do have a lot of self-confidence, but it isn’t polite to say so. I just said, “It must be nice to have a father like that.”

“It’s hell.”

“What?”

“Oh, it’s okay for my mother. She loves him, worships him, almost; and my sister gets along fine with him. They are both the shy, retiring types.”

“And you aren’t?”

It was a joke, of course. I said it lightly, but she replied, “Damned straight!” Then she got up so fast that she almost tore herself out of my arms, and walked stiffly away, a firm, fine, living, cafe-au-lait statue of Venus. She disappeared below, and I didn’t see her again for two hours. When she came back up, she had dressed in Will’s jeans and shirt, and she didn’t mention her father again.

An omen perhaps. Certainly a warning, but it had not made sense to me at the time. It still didn’t, not where my thinking mind lives, but in the undermind where all is groping after glimpses of pattern against a background of chaos, it fit. It rang true. Her words on that fine Mediterranean day and her leaving me without warning or explanation were like two pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle. They fitted together, but while the rest of the puzzle lay scattered, they meant little. more tomorrow

At my elbow, a heavy American tourist with a Texas accent talked about triple compound expansion, and from the references he made it was clear that he owned a small steam engine of some kind. Whether it was the kind you put in a launch, or one of those silly live-steam trains that you see grown men riding around on top of, he didn’t say.

Technical conversations fascinate me, and dedicated enthusiasts fascinate me. Another time, I would have made an excuse to engage the man in conversation to learn more about these steamers I liked so well. But not today. Today was for solitude.

I went on to the upper deck. Since I was using the Senator’s money, I had bought a first class ticket. The view was the same as it had been from the second class section on the main deck. Gorgeous. Steep, grassy hillsides dotted with chalets, cattle grazing, and all reflected in the glassy perfection of the lake. In the distance off the bow, beyond Montreaux, the snow clad peaks of the true Alps were playing peek-a-boo among the clouds.

Eventually, I became aware that one of the other passengers was eyeing me. She was young and lovely, in a tight mini-dress and sandals. She had hair cut shorter than mine, very black and straight, and lashes too long to be real. Her companion was blonde and frilly with a habit of hiding her mouth when she talked. They were leaning against the rail, talking, and giving me covert looks.

I don’t know why girls do that. I would not call myself handsome. Not like Will is. I am just six feet, one ninety, broad where a man should be broad and narrow where a man should be narrow, but no one would ever put me on the cover of Gentlemen’s Quarterly. Field and Stream, maybe. Not that I mind the attention, but it confuses me. My first reaction is always to wonder if they are joking. Did I forget to zip something?

Normally, I like the attention, but today I had Raven on my mind. When the girl with the lashes finally sent me a smile that would have melted a statue, I shook my head and turned away. When I looked around later, she was gone.

So then, naturally, I found myself regretting the lost opportunity. Consistently inconsistent.

I wedged my pack against the seat, put my feet up on the rail, and made myself comfortable. Fifty-two hours. That was how long it had been since I woke up to find Raven gone. Fifty-two hours, and I was still in shock. I was walking through my life half awake. I was eating, sleeping, making conversation, making decisions, choosing logical courses of action, not falling overboard. But I was doing it all with my mind only half engaged.

I sighed. It was one of those sighs that starts in the back of your throat and shudders you all the way down to your feet. It was good that no one was sitting near; they would have called the paramedics. And then I chuckled. Pitiful. Pathetic. Too sad to live. You can only take yourself so seriously, and then all your actions turn into farce. more tomorrow